WARNING: CONTAINS GRAPHIC, POTENTIALLY DISTRESSING IMAGERY
A TV presenter has been slammed on social media after posing with a mountain lion he killed while hunting in the Canadian mountains.
Steve Ecklund, from Alberta, Canada killed the mountain lion in his home province on Sunday and is pictured grinning as its carcass is held to the camera.
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The co-host of the Canadian hunting show, The Edge, is well-known for his controversial killing of rams, lions, black bears and lions in Canada and North America and regularly posts updates of himself and his wife, Alison Ecklund, in hunting gear.
Steve and Alison are both fiercely defended by an active pro-hunting community online, but in the UK, campaign group Hunt Saboteurs Association have called the sport 'morally reprehensible'.
Credit: Mercury Press
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In the images posted online, Steve poses alongside his friends and two beagles as the lion lies on its stomach with blood staining its fur.
In a later post, which is filtered online as showing 'graphic violence or gore', Steve shows what appears to be a heart that has been cut open.
On The Edge's website, Steve is identified as a 'fair chase hunter', which means all hunts he participates in are purportedly ethical and all animals are free-ranging, so they aren't confined by gates or barriers.
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Credit: Mercury Press
But a UK-based anti-hunting campaigner called Steve 'morally reprehensible' and termed the death of the mountain lion a 'barbaric act'.
Lee
Moon, a spokesperson from campaign group Hunt Saboteurs, said:
"Whether legal or illegal, and whatever country it occurs in,
hunting for sport is morally reprehensible and has no place in a
so-called civilised society.
"Links
between animal and human abuse are well documented and it's beyond
our comprehension what makes people think this kind of barbaric act
is deemed acceptable.
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"When the authorities don't act it's no wonder that people take matters into their own hands and protect hunted animals themselves."
Credit: Mercury Press
A
spokesperson from PETA said: "Only someone dead in heart and
head could fail to see that mountain lions, wild boars, deer, and
other animals are thinking, feeling individuals - not 'things' to blow away for amusement.
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"Those
animals whose lives aren't taken outright by hunters often endure
slow, agonising deaths, leaving their offspring to starve, as they're
unable to fend for themselves after their mothers have been killed by
some human trying to compensate for feelings of inadequacy.
"All most of us see when we look at a photograph of a hunter who gunned down an animal for 'pleasure' is photographic evidence of a small person with deep-seated insecurities."
Featured Image Credit: Mercury PressTopics: UK News, News, US News, Hunting, Animals